Masks of the Great One

Masks: Session 1

Panash makes contact with Varrokh. The job is to pick up a delivery of saffron arriving in Carroc Azuul from the east and bring it back to him in Duragzhar. The team adds a new member, Sidum Raj, knowing that they needed someone who can speak thieves' cant in order to do effective business with Lira Anderkin, their contact in Carroc Azuul.

The group buys horses and leaves on the week-long journey. They are waylaid by a shambling mound and lose one of the horses. After a hard battle, the party is not fooled when the shambler feigns death and destroys it.

When they get to The Boot, Lira's bar in Carroc Azzul, the saffron has not yet arrived. They ask Lira if she knows of any jobs they could do in town while they wait, and she directs them to her sister, Sigrun, whose son went missing two weeks earlier.

They arrive at the dilapidated, but once proud, longhouse of the Devkin clan, where Sigrun lives after marrying Ivar Devkin. The dwarf who greets them at the door has a strange bony lump on his forehead. They are escorted to the back of the longhouse, where Sigrun prays to her son's clan ancestors for his safe return. The back wall is covered in bronze death masks, cast from the dead faces of important members of the Devkin clan before burial. Except for the first, each of these masks shows a similar bony growth on its face.

Sigrun explain that her son Bjarne went missing two week earlier, presumably after wandering into the moors. A member of the community wanders into the moors every few years for reasons unknown. They always return after a few days, so no one will help Sigrun because they assume Bjarne will return on his own. Upon return these dwarves have memory problems. Bjarne's father had been one who had wandered into the moors, about a year before Bjarne was born. He died five years ago, and his death mask now hangs in the clan shrine. The only living dwarf to have wandered into the moors is Erasmus Hildkin, the local undertaker.

Sigrun shows the PCs to Bjarne's sleeping alcove. The walls are covered in charcoal portraits of various dwarves, including a self-portrait. Bjarne is young, about 20, with a patchy beard and a thin face. The PCs decide questioning the undertaker about his experiences in the moors is the best place to start.

Erasmus claims that he doesn't remember anything about going to the moors, but he seems to be hiding something. The PCs press him, but he becomes belligerent after resisting a charm person spell. When he suspects the questioning may become violent, he calls over his young assistant to show he is not alone. The PCs decide their next lead is to try to follow Bjarne into the moors.

They are able to pick up his tracks, and follow them north from the city. After traveling for a few hours, they see a group of large moving shapes in the fog. As they sneak closer they see it is a sounder of giant boars, with two fully grown females and their piglets. They are investigating something on the ground. Charming the dominant female with a spell, Anathra sends the boars away. When they investigate the area, they find a set of dwarven clothes and a pack. The pigs had been investigating some food that had been left behind. There is no blood on the clothes, and nothing to indicate that there was a corpse here. The sun has gone down and the pigs have destroyed the tracks in the area. Further investigation down this avenue will have to wait until morning, but the PCs do see a group of four lights circling a nearby hill.

They stealthily investigate, finding that the lights are not lanterns, but instead will-o-wisps. They decide to attack, and get the jump on the unprepared creatures. Two are damaged, and they all flee by phasing through a stone trap door on the top of the hill.